


Hunter's Moon

by mad_martha



Series: Checkmate Series [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, M/M, PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-31
Updated: 2011-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-25 03:11:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry and Ron spend a chilly Samhain together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunter's Moon

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a short, snippety thing; not really a sequel. This occurs an unspecified time after The Tree Of Life.

Ron Weasley trudged back up through the copse, circled around overgrown ruin of an ancient shepherd's hut, until he reached the small bluff overhanging the sheltered spot where the campsite was hidden.  He'd taken a ridiculously roundabout way of returning, but it wasn't possible for them to be too careful and a spot between his shoulders always itched a little as though hidden eyes were on it.  As he crossed the wards a reassuring tingle spread across him from head to toe, and he sighed with relief at knowing he was finally hidden from view.

Harry wasn't about, but Ron took that as a good sign.  His own haul from the snares they'd set out the previous evening was just one small rabbit, and at the end of October, with winter beginning to put a sharp bite on everything, he'd managed a handful of late potatoes left at the edge of a field by a tractor and a couple of mangelwurzels.  Ron would not have chosen to eat mangelwurzel, but if it was stewed with the rabbit and potatoes and a handful of seasoning from their travel rations, it would probably taste okay.  Harry had gone in the opposite direction and Ron hoped he would have better luck with his snares.  If they couldn't forage better than this they would have to buy provisions from a nearby town, and that was the kind of risk Harry's father James was always warning them against.

Laying a fire in a ring of stones, Ron set some water to boil in their cooking cauldron  and peeled the potatoes.  The mangelwurzels were more of a challenge; harder even than a turnip, it took an effort just to slice the top off one.  He managed to peel and chop it with a struggle, and even that was an awful lot of wurzel for two people to eat, so he set the other one aside and dug out their precious packet of salt, spices and dried herbs that kept their main meals from being bland wastelands of spud and anonymous meat.

Harry appeared just as he finished skinning the rabbit.

"Good timing," Ron commented.  "Any luck?"

"Not if you're hoping for more rabbit," Harry said wearily.  "The damn snares must be jinxed.  One of them was practically on top of a burrow, but nothing!  Still, I did find this - " And he held up a pheasant.  "It got its silly neck stuck in a fence and couldn't get out.  I'll clean it in a minute.  And here, I found some wild garlic and dug the bulbs up.  Adds a nice prehistoric touch to things, doesn't it?"

"Want to shove the pheasant in the pot with the rabbit?" Ron asked.

"Might as well.  We can eat any leftovers cold tomorrow.  I'll just pluck this thing ..."

He returned with the cleaned pheasant and a handful of long, green tail-feathers a short while later.  Ron chopped the bird up and popped it into the cauldron, then slid the flat cover over.

"I reckon we've got enough flour left for some flat-bread," he suggested.  The cauldron lid was an excellent place to cook the thin rounds of dough when it got hot.  "What are you planning to do with those feathers?"

"Give them to Mum, probably.  Reckon your mum'd like a few?"

"I'll go halves with you.  She's got hats she'd probably like to trim."

"Okay."  Harry sat down beside him, crossed-legged.  He looked tired.  "I won't be sorry to move on from here," he commented.

"Bit bleak," Ron agreed, peering out into the gathering darkness with a grimace.  "I wouldn't mind being somewhere a bit friendlier tonight."

"Yeah.  I realised earlier - it's Samhain.  Most of the Covens will be holding the Great Rite tonight."

"They must be bloody bonkers, in this weather," Ron said, and Harry chuckled.

"You don't notice the cold once you've drunk from the Cup of Life - remember?"

Ron snorted.  "They'll notice soon enough in the morning!"

"Yeah!  Still ... there'll be a feast and booze and ritual fires.  I could go for that."

"We've got a fire and rabbit stew and butterbeer," Ron said more prosaically.  "Tell you what, though - I'll hollow out this wurzel and make a lantern.  Since it's Hallowe'en.  And we could tell ghost stories, if you like."

Harry looked at him, grinning.  "I reckon this place is creepy enough!  And do you even know any?"

Ron had to admit that he had a point. "We'll just have to find something else to do then," he said slyly, and Harry laughed.

"I'm pretty sure we'll think of something!"

In the time it took the stew to cook Ron managed to hollow out the wurzel - not without difficulty - and carved a lopsided grinning face into it.  With a witchlight inside it and suspended on a charm a few feet from their tent, it added a certain atmosphere to things, alleviating some of the oppressive darkness that came from cloud cover that blocked out nearly all moonlight; and the cooking smells added some warmth to their camp.  Harry mixed flour, salt and a pinch of dried herbs with water to make a soft dough and cooked flattened pieces of it on the cauldron lid.

"It's not half bad," he commented a while later, when they were trying not to burn their tongues on the hot stew.

"The garlic helps a lot."  Ron dipped a piece of flatbread into the juices.  "So, how much longer do you reckon we'll need to hang on here?  The ley-line seems to be pretty clean now."

"Hopefully we'll hear from Dad tomorrow.  Believe me, I'm ready to see civilisation again _right_ now - this place is like being stuck on the edge of the world."  Harry stared into the darkness for a moment or two.  "Wind's getting up too.  When I was a kid, we'd have a midnight feast in the dorm at the coven and one of the priestesses would tell us old myths and legends to pass the time while the grown-ups were doing the Rite.  There's a whole bunch of stories about the Wild Hunt riding out during Samhain and the gates to the other world opening."

"What's the Wild Hunt?" Ron asked, interested.

"Depends who you ask.  Mum and people like Maevi will tell you that it's Herne and his hounds and the people of the woods performing their own Great Rite, but a lot of versions are a bit ..."  Harry paused, choosing his words.  "Well, a bit more spooky than that.  Herne hunts on foot, you see, and in most of the tales it's a horseback hunt.  The Irish call it a _sluagh_ , the armies of the fae-folk riding out and gathering up lost souls, but the English version is more based on Saxon legends, I think, and it's a lot darker.  Basically, you don't want to be lost in the dark on any of the Sabbats, but especially not this one."

"Why's that?"

"Because if you're lost on a Sabbat - and I don't mean just physically lost - then the Wild Hunt could come for you and steal you away.  They ride out with the dead when the gates between our world and the next open, and gather lost souls before them on their way back."  He waved his spoon at the wurzel lantern that grinned at them out of the darkness.  "That's why people huddle up indoors and put lanterns in the windows, to ward off the likes of the Wild Hunt."

"Good thing I made that lantern then," Ron said dryly, and Harry laughed.

"I reckon we're safe.  I never met anyone who claimed to have seen the Wild Hunt pass by, let alone get carried off by it!  But when there's a really rough storm, you'll hear most of the coven people talking about the Wild Hunt."

Ron put his empty bowl down on the ground beside him and peered out into the darkness.  "Hope we don't get a rough storm," he said.  "The wards are good for a heavy shower, but if the wind really takes off we're going to know about it in that tent.  Remind me again why we didn't bring one of the proper tents, instead of this Muggle thing?"

"Too risky," Harry replied, and continued in a singsong tone that showed just how often this piece of reasoning was recited at them, "Magical tents give off a magical signature if someone's looking.  Setting up the wards is dangerous enough ..."

They cleaned up their dishes, decided to put the fire out completely, and stowed the cauldron, containing the remains of the stew, in a corner inside the tent.  Nothing was left outside, just in case the weather did turn ugly.  The wards – which were primarily there to screen their work on the ley line – would only keep out so much of the wind and rain and had no effect on the temperature whatsoever, and the rule when using the Muggle tents was 'no warming charms'.  By the time they were ready to crawl into their blankets, it was cold enough to make Ron shudder.

"The temperature's dropped," Harry noted unnecessarily, when he returned from cleaning his teeth and taking care of other necessary business.

"I noticed," Ron said shortly, and he quickly laced up the flaps of the tent to keep the wind out.

"You brought the lantern in."  Harry was amused.

"Yeah – I know it's not much light, but it seemed stupid to set another witch-light when we've already got this one."  Ron paused to consider the rather eerie effect of the orange glow and fanged grin of the lantern.  "Say if it's a bit too atmospheric, though."

"No, it's fine."

They shuffled around each other awkwardly as they got ready for bed; the tent was barely big enough for the two of them and all their gear.  Bed itself was a thick pad on the ground that could be shrunk to fit in the bottom of Ron's pack, and a pile of blankets that turned into the actual packs and tent bag when they moved on, and they both tended to sleep in their t-shirts, boxers and socks for extra warmth.  Seductive it wasn't, as Harry had noted once or twice, but – as Ron had noted on more than one occasion – that was never a problem for them.  They wriggled around until they were both as comfortable as they could get and as usual they ended up facing each other.

Ron was intrigued to notice that Harry's eyes were a very dark mossy green verging on black in the strange low light the lantern threw.

"The wind's definitely getting up," Harry said, and he was right; the canvas walls of the tent were starting to sag and billow under the rapidly changing pressures.

"It's anchored well enough and the groundsheet should be water-tight if it rains," Ron replied.  He'd learned a lot of tricks for making sure that equipment stayed put and didn't leak in his rather chequered previous employment.  "Reckon the only thing we've got to worry about is that Wild Hunt of yours turning up."

Harry grinned at him.  "Well … there _is_ this rite we could perform that's supposed to ward the Hunt off."

Ron snorted, amused.  "No, _really?_   It doesn't involve us shagging like stoats, does it?"

"Funny you should mention that …"

"Yeah, well – not trying to be a mood-killer here, but I'm bloody _freezing_.  You don't want my hands on your arse right now."

"Stop trying to be noble, it doesn't suit you."  And Harry grabbed his hands and stuck them under his own t-shirt.  They both gasped and shuddered, Harry at the shock of Ron's icy fingers, and Ron at coming into abrupt contact with his partner's startlingly warm belly.

"Merlin, you're kicking out heat like Mum's kitchen range!"  Ron slid his arms cautiously around Harry and the closeness made him aware of something else that made him look at Harry in amused disbelief.  "Tell me you aren't getting turned on by a pair of cold hands!"

Harry shrugged and grinned.  "Don't knock it!  It's kind of erotic – makes a little shiver down my spine that goes straight to my balls."

"You are such a pervert."  But Ron didn't let this stop him experimenting with the effect, by trailing his fingers lightly down Harry's spine.  He could feel the little twitches in his warm skin and the underlying muscles, and Harry mumbled happily into the curve of his throat.

"Yeah … like that …"

He was definitely enjoying it; Ron could feel his cock prodding his hipbone.  He decided to press his luck a little and tucked his fingers under the elastic of Harry's boxers, sliding them down and slipping one finger into the crack of Harry's arse until he could stroke a certain intimate spot.  Harry's breath hitched.

"You're warming up a bit," he murmured, and his lips moved over the spot on Ron's neck that formed the curve between his throat and his collarbone.  He licked the spot, making Ron shiver, then sucked on it lightly.  "Could do with warming up a bit more, though."  One hot hand spread over Ron's belly under his t-shirt, tight between the two of them, then slid unerringly downwards, inside Ron's boxers, until Harry's strong fingers were grasping his cock and working it firmly, almost roughly, the way Ron liked it.

Ron got a hand free of clothing and blankets and grabbed the back of Harry's head, dragging him around for a deep, bruising kiss.  He was mostly lying on his back now with Harry sprawled on top of him, and Harry humped his thigh lazily as he squeezed and stroked Ron's cock.  It felt great but Ron found he couldn't think properly with this going on, and he wanted more than to just be jerked off anyway.  He grabbed Harry's wrist to stall him and with a effort flipped them both over until Harry was under him instead.  The blankets went flying, making them both groan and fight to pull them back into place.

But Ron had got what he wanted, which was Harry at his mercy, and he pinned him down while he ruthlessly pushed up his t-shirt and lick-sucked his way all the way down to his crotch.  His boxers were already adrift from Ron's earlier assault, and now he tugged them out of his way completely, admittedly with Harry's eager cooperation.

And at the last minute he paused, peering up at Harry in the weird orange half-light of the lantern.  "This rite – does it involve me sucking you off, then shagging you till you can't walk?"

"Something like that," Harry panted.

"Good."

And Ron proceeded to do just that.

 

Some time later Ron awoke from uneasy dreams of running through dark fields, pursued by spectral huntsmen.  _So much for magical sex rites warding off the Wild Hunt_ , he thought fuzzily.  The lantern had burned out sometime earlier and he was conscious that even Harry's solid warmth against his side wasn't doing much to fend off the freezing air in the tent.  Despite his sturdy knitted socks his feet were like blocks of ice, and when he moved he could feel Harry's equally chilly knees against his own.  The wind had blown itself out and the air was now very still; cold was striking up from the ground beneath them.

This, he knew, was not good.

They were either going to have to get up and put on all their clothes to sleep in, and risk "not feeling the benefit" in the morning as his mother would say, or they were going to have to do something else to get warm, because their bedding just wasn't enough for this kind of weather.  It felt like a really hard frost was settling in.

Ron gave Harry a slight nudge.  "Mate."

"Mmm?"

"Wake up.  It's bloody freezing – we need to do some heating charms or something."

"No charms," Harry mumbled.  "You know the rules."  He was starting to drift awake – and almost at once hissed and pulled his feet up as he became consciously aware of the cold.

"It's heating charms or we pack up and leave," Ron told him flatly.  "We're going to have frostbite by morning if we don't."

There was a long pause as Harry seemed to think about this.  Ron was pretty sure he was reaching out with his earth magic to feel the ground and air around them.  Then a long, unenthusiastic sigh, followed by Harry pulling his wand out from somewhere and lighting the lantern with a lumos charm.

"Come on, we'd better get dressed," he said.

"To do what?"  Not that Ron entirely minded; anything to get warmer than he was right now.

"Pack and leave.  The ground's going to be frozen solid by morning, so we're not going to be able to do anything, even if we stay.  Let's get the tent down and head out of here."

Ron was already pulling his jeans on clumsily under the blankets.  "You have anywhere in mind?"

Harry sat up, shivering, to pull on the first of several jumpers.  "Yeah.  Let's just Apparate to the Green Lord Coven.  We've got ward access there and they perform the rite, so someone will probably still be awake to meet the Huntress and King Stag when _they_ decide it's too bloody cold to spend the whole night shagging under a tree."

Ron grinned.  " _Hunter_ and King Stag," he reminded Harry.  "Or Huntress and – um – Queen Doe?"  The Green Lord Coven had an unusual number of same-sex couples.

Harry snorted.  "I don't care, so long as their hearth fire hasn't gone out!"

It took about ten minutes to dress, gather everything up, strike the tent, scatter the stones and charcoal of their camp fire, dismiss the wards, and shoulder their packs - or at least, so it seemed to Ron.  Perhaps it had taken a _little_ longer than that, but the icy cold was a great motivator.  They did one quick, final sweep of the area, just to be sure, then Harry nodded.

"Let's go."

They Apparated away, leaving nothing behind but some flattened scrub grass, a couple of handfuls of ash -

\- and a scattering of muddy hoof prints around the boundary of their campsite.

 

 **  
_~ finis ~_   
**

**Author's Note:**

> For those who don't know, a mangelwurzel (or Mangold Wurzel) is a large root vegetable similar to a swede; it's mostly grown as livestock feed in the UK, but it's quite edible and can be cooked like swede and the young leaves used in salads.


End file.
